Tisch Special Programs

Skateboards were designed. Cockroaches climbed the walls. A metal device dipped like the Dow Jones.

These art installations and more could be found in Havana April 3 to April 30. The biennial includes works from more than 300 artists and 54 countries. The theme, "Integration and Resistance in the Global Age," invites artists to incorporate issues of globalization, immigration, and the economy in their pieces. The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes is hosting the biggest exhibition by American art galleries in Cuba since the 1959 revolution. Read more in the New York Times.

Undergraduate students at New York University can create their own art with Tisch School of the Arts in Cuba. Three programs are offered during the spring semester: Directed Research Topics: Seminar on Cuban Arts, Documentary Video Production in Havana, and Photography: On Location in Havana.

Karen Eilbacher shares this blog entry from South Africa:

This past weekend, five of us traveled down south to spend a few days in Cape Town for the study break. The two-hour flight to Cape Town from Johannesburg, compared to the flight that brought us initially to South Africa, felt like nothing. For our time spent in Cape Town, we were able to enjoy a nice steak dinner at the Waterfront at a chic grill and seafood restaurant named Balthazar’s. Then, much of the night’s excitement lingered all along Long Street so we spent the rest of the evening swooping in and out of various bars and clubs.

Robben Island

The next day, it was a very early morning for us getting up to go on our tour of Robben Island, but we all managed to get there in time before the boat ride from the shores of Cape Town to the Island departed. Once we arrived at Robben Island, a tour bus transported us all about it and gave an in-depth telling of the island’s history and now it’s current status. We also were able to explore the cell in which Nelson Mandela stayed throughout the period of his detainment. With the sun beating down on us so fiercely, we were left no other choice it seemed but to hit the beach after the tour.

Dublin playwriting student Dylan Lamb recounts a group trip to the West of Ireland in this entry:

The gang ventured Westward to the Island of Inis Oirr, the smallest of the three Aran Islands, just off of the coast of Ireland's mainland. The island boasts about 250 full-time residents, probably four streetlights, and just about as many pubs. We stopped in Galway on the way over and spent the afternoon perusing through street markets, walking the beach along Galway Bay, and squeezing in some fish and chips at McDonagh's, which Susanne dubs "the best in Ireland" (we got cod -- they were out of the ray). Erin recommends the mushy peas for a lighter vegetarian alternative.

Tigh Ruari

On the Island, we were treated to a home-cooked meal at one of the pubs, Tigh Ruari, which warmed us up a little from the nasty weather outside. After checking out the local night life (read: drinking some really cheap Guinness with a few, shall we say, regulars), we called it an evening and snuggled in at a local hostel. (Some slept more soundly than others: I apparently snored -- uncharacteristically, of course).

Thanks to Dublin Playwriting student Olga Kreimer for the following blog entry:

Man, no wonder Yeats was a poet.

County Sligo (a region in a northwestern-ish part of the country which the five of us in the Irish Dramatic Renaissance class, along with our teacher Sara and the program director, Susanne, were lucky enough to visit last weekend) is best known for being the birthplace of W.B. Yeats, one of Ireland's most prominent writers and a co-founder of the Abbey Theatre in the early 20th century.

The correlation between the poet and the place must be more than incidental; not only was the weather appropriately fickle (we got sunshine, mist, windy rain and hail by turns over the course of twenty-four hours), but the rolling hills, imposing mountains and abundance of the greenest green you've ever seen were exactly what most people imagine “Ireland” to look like. We visited some of the specific geographic locations that Yeats refers to in his plays and poetry, including the Lake Isle of Innisfree (“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree”), and believe me, once you see the place, you can hardly blame the guy for being homesick.

The LAB, brought to you by Dublin City Council is pleased to invite you to FROM CONTEXT TO EXHIBITION at the LAB, Foley Street, D1 on Thursday 23rd April at 6pm.

The exhibition will be launched on Thurs 23rd April by Peggy Shaw, New York based international performance artist and co-founder of UK based performance company Split Britches. The exhibition will run from 23rd - 30th April inclusive.

Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts, will host a series of talks, supported by The LAB, to accompany the exhibition of work that arts students from National College of Art and Design, Dublin Institute of Technology, Institute of Art Design and Technology and Tisch School of the Arts, New York University have created with communities of place and/or interest.

Want to get the inside scoop on a semester in Shanghai with Tisch? Check out student Ryann Weir's blog from her fall 2008 semester in China. Here's a sample and link to her blog:

Last night was our big Chinese Opera performance. It occurs to me that I haven't written much- or anything- about Chinese Opera even though it's the primary focus of my studies in China. I guess I haven't written about it mostly because it's very strange to describe. As I'm sure you can observe, it's not much like the western theater we know.

The singing is often high-pitched, nasal, shrill- frankly, difficult to listen to. The movement- all of it from your eye balls to your toes- is highly controlled and calculated. It's choreographed to the second in time with music.

But the most interesting thing, i think, is the design. Everything is extremely ornate. The make-up takes an hour at least to apply and each piece of hair is applied individually to your head. There's a photograph of it above, I think. Anyhow, they take chunks of hair and soak them in sap and then glue them down to your head. After that, they put on a face tightener. Those are the white straps in the picture. They're excruciatingly tight pieces of tape that are meant to stretch your face. They pain is incredible. Our teacher told us that when she trained as a little girl, the first time they tried on the face tighteners, all of the students began to vomit. It's really, really awful. But it looks pretty cool.

I'm fairly certain that I have no future in Chinese Opera but at the end of the semester, I have a lot to take away from studying it. Telling a simple story can be incredibly complicated, it's often nice to have a right and wrong answer, if you have to, you can assimilate to almost anything, and everywhere you go, people are mostly the same but the subtle differences of mannerisms and language and perspective are the most interesting parts.

Class photo of Tisch School of the Arts students studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London this spring.

Casey Craig, a drama student at Tisch School of the Arts, helped develop a local history walking tour of the Magdalen Laundry in Ballybough, Dublin.

Photo courtesy of The Sunday Tribune.

Casey tells The Sunday Tribune that the project "opened my eyes to a whole other type of art practice."

The project was part of How Arts Creates the World: Dublin, a joint program with Tisch and the Dublin Institute of Technology and the National College of Art and Design. Four students are participating in this program this spring.

The students' art installations are part of the show "From Context to Exhibition" which runs at the Lab, Dublin City Council's art space until April 30. Read more at The Sunday Tribune.